I offer him a small, deflated smile as I push the stroller
through the doorway. “I’m not going to abscond with your baby.”

“I don’t just mean the baby.”

The door’s almost shut, but I catch a glimpse of his face as
he says it, and in those brief seconds, I detect nothing but irritation.

It makes no sense, his words coupled with his expression,
but I’m coming to understand that about Locke. The conflict and layers and
constant upkeep it takes for him to keep pretending everything in his life is
okay.

I lift the stroller the way I saw Locke do it—surprised by
the lightness—and descend the staircase sideways. Lily smacks at my face and
tries to palm my nose. I blow a raspberry at her, but I’m thinking about the
man I left behind, and how I’m coming to learn that sometimes, it’s not
kindness I crave.

I’m used to emotional charge. Usually in the rollercoaster
form of grief, thinking everything will to be all right, like when the
treatment’s working and Paige has more energy, before the crash of devastation
when told there’s nothing more that can be done.

But this ride with Locke…the leap from
anger to happiness to sweetness, then back to anger, in such a short amount of
time, has me wanting to lift my dress and deal with the overdrive in an
entirely different way. I want to straddle him, to massage and kiss and tame
him.

I shudder as I drop Lily’s wheels to the ground.

Maybe…

I can keep looking forward to dinner.

Author Bio

Ketley Allison has
always been a romantic at heart. That passion ignited when she realized she
could put those dreams into words and her soul into characters. Ketley was born
in Canada, moved to Australia when she was thirteen, to California when she was
twenty, and finally to New York to attend law school, but most of that time was
spent sitting in coffee shops and wine bars thinking of her next book.

Her other passions
include coffee, wine, Big Macs, her cat, and her husband, possibly in that
order.

I really struggled to get through this book, and it was for one reason – IT WAS SO LONG. God, I felt like I would never make it to the end of this book.

Carter’s best friend, Paige, has passed away, leaving Carter with no rights to her 9 month old daughter, Lily. Before she passed, Paige informed Carter that she wanted her to find Lily’s father, Locke Hayes, and introduce him to his daughter.

Carter goes to New York, where Locke lives, and basically ambushes him, making all kinds of assumptions without getting to know him and assuming he won’t want the baby. Locke is stunned at first, but handles the situation really well. Meanwhile, Carter acts like a whiny brat because she wants Lily but has no rights to her. This part of the story made no sense to me. Paige could have contacted a lawyer and given Carter custody. After my son was born, I created a legal document giving my sister-in-law custody of my kids if anything happened to us. It just made no sense.

There was a side story about why Locke hooked up with Paige, and boy was it silly. And we’re supposed to believe that all of these events happened two years before, and that all of these characters have matured that much in two years. These characters were written to seem much older than they were, which was hard to believe.

While I loved Locke, and thought he really stepped up, I didn’t love Carter as much. She was a pouty brat because she wanted Lily and couldn’t have her. She made some assumptions and stereotyped Locke, and it was unfair. I got that she had been with Lily since the beginning and loved her, but she should have done something before Paige died to get custody.

And yes, I do realize that if she did that, she never would have gone to New York and met Locke.

I also struggled with the pages and pages of thoughts. Pages. I skipped many pages because it was just thoughts. As I said above, this book was too long. There also wasn’t a lot of backstory about Carter and her family problems. Just some gaps that weren’t filled in.

I did like Locke’s friends and his sister, Astor. She seems to be who the next book is about.

While this book had an epilogue, it wasn’t to close up this story – it was to introduce us to the next one, which really bothered me.

The story itself was well written, but again, it was way too long and thought heavy.